


Come a Little Closer

by comtessedebussy



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Manhandling, Orgasm Control, Power Play, Rough Sex, Strength Kink, Trust Issues, Trust Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 16:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comtessedebussy/pseuds/comtessedebussy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took John a while to admit it, but having a synthetic partner comes with its upsides: instant access to a vast array of information and data, increased effectiveness, a better chance of surviving encounters with criminals, great sex, and maybe even that synthetic soul that's able to return his feelings. </p><p>Having a synthetic partner also comes with its downsides, like the fact that programming, no matter how complex, can be hacked and rewritten, turning his partner against him. </p><p>And John's never exactly been a believer in the idea that "the power of love" could save any person or relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a short fic written to fullfill my manhandling kink, and eventually spiralled into this lengthy thing! I'm almost completely finished with it, but decided to put it up in chapters so that my readers can get a start with the beginning while I finish up the end. So, it really shouldn't be too long (no more than a day, I hope) until I the entire thing is posted.
> 
> Despite the description of the fic itself (which sounds rather morbid), I must emphasize the "happy ending" tag. It applies.

It was a fact about most humans that they needed boundaries. They liked their privacy, their personal bubbles, their secrets, and John was no exception.

Dorian understood it, to a certain extent: living with personality-less, feature-less, uniform MX’s who stared at him with their lifeless eyes as if he, too, were an object like them would drive any man (android) to insanity. Still, humans had their own special brand of pickiness, which manifested itself in angry retorts and defensive jokes every time their detailed line in the sand was crossed, and sometimes it made Dorian glad that he wasn’t human. Glad, that his synthetic body was not a canvas for his emotions the way a human’s was. For those who could see – and Dorian could see all too well – a human body was a written ledger of fears and furies, joys and embarrassments,  written in the chemical and statistical responses picked up by Dorian’s scanners. With that came a certain vulnerability no human would admit to and that Dorian, for all his longing for humanity, did not envy.

And so Dorian kept a promise he’d made to John once: he didn’t turn his all-to-perceptive senses on any part of John’s body.

Well, except for the times when he did.

It’d started with the sex. It was one of those activities where Dorian felt strangely and completely out of depth. It was an ignorance he was not used to - he was used to having information, too much information, statistics and data flooding his synthetic brain at every instant. But here, in this realm of intimacy, he needed all the guidance he could get. However many instructions and facts he knew, however well he understood the physical processes of human arousal, he could never know how it felt, never share that experience in the true physical sense. He hadn’t an inkling of what reaction it elicited when he pressed his lips to skin softly or demandingly. He knew how to do everything in particular, but didn’t know what to do in general.

And so John had grudgingly agreed to let himself be read, scanned, understood when they were intimate. Had agreed that he would let his own body guide Dorian. And so Dorian’s sensors and scanners became his navigators through this strange realm of physicality, helped along by John’s verbal responses. They gave him the security to try and the fact (a fact he had so long doubted) that John truly wanted this, this strange thing between a human and a synthetic, that his moans and gasps were not just so many faked sounds, played as if on a recording.

It started like that, just Dorian reading John’s vitals to confirm the moan of pleasure when Dorian’s lips touched John’s body, Dorian sensing the arousal flooding through the human when he mouthed kisses along John’s jaw or closed his lips around the human’s erection. It told him that John liked the needy kisses as much as the soft, gentle ones, that he enjoyed the messy hand jobs and quick blow jobs they exchanged hectically. It reassured him that even without real penetration (which they had either not gotten to or wouldn’t -  Dorian hadn’t really got the guts to ask yet), John enjoyed this, wanted it, needed it.

It also gave him a strange kind of familiarity with John. At any moment, he could recite what John’s vitals should be, including his resting heart rate, average blood pressure, and temperature. He knew every inch of John’s body, inside and out, both because he’s mapped it with his kisses and because he’s scanned it with his sensors. John muttered occasional complaints, but Dorian could tell (and _not_ because he was cheating), that he was pleased by the attention.

The problem, however, is that John keeps getting into danger and giving Dorian other stupid reasons to invade his privacy, and between John’s privacy and his safety, he’d choose making sure that John’s all right any day. Even if it meant that, with Dorian’s very familiarity with the exact way John’s body manifested arousal, he got to find out embarrassing (for John, at least) facts, like the fact that John was aroused at the strangest, most inconvenient of times.  

The first time he noticed that fact, they were investigating a murder scene. The trail of blood and DNA led under a car, which needed to be lifted. With a simple shrug, Dorian picked up and flipped the entire thing. Turning his head, he found John staring in shock, his mouth gaping open so wide a bird could fly inside. He looked so stunned that Dorian was almost worried. Dorian blinked in surprise himself and switched to his sensors for the merest millisecond, spurred on by a curiosity that got the better of him. A quick scan of John’s vitals revealed that, beneath the shock and surprise there was – _arousal_? Stifling his confusion, Dorian turned towards the evidence, with John joining him.

“Well? What do we have here?” John asked, and Dorian turned his sensors elsewhere. He filed the encounter away in his vast memory, to be retrieved when necessary but of no concern now.

The next time, John _was_ actually in danger. True to his reckless nature, he’d ventured into a den of thieves and criminals on his own. “They don’t take too kindly to synthetics,” he’d said, as if Dorian were worried about his own danger when John’s safety was at stake. But, in his experience, arguing with John was about as useful as arguing with a wall, so he’d let it go. The result was John being tossed unceremoniously through the window, and secretly, Dorian was glad for an excuse to stay by his side to protect him from any more serious harm.

That more serious harm was coming. Dorian had no idea what John had done to get tossed through a window the first time he walked in, because he was _good_ at this, at blending in with the lower elements of the city and pretending he wasn’t a cop but one of _them._ He did it perfectly. Dorian stood by him, attempting to appear as inconspicuous as possible. His easy smiles and easygoing manner weren’t useful here, so he let John do the talking. Someone caught on, however, and soon they had a riot on their hands, because, apparently, John had been exactly right and they didn’t take too kindly to synthetics.

Dorian surged into action immediately, his inhuman speed allowing himself to place his own body between John and those of the attackers. He was fast, taking on several at a time, but John wouldn’t be John if he didn’t get involved. With his inhuman hearing, he could hear the sound of a fist colliding with John’s face as he easily disposed of the pair of humans he was occupied with. By the time he was done, John was bloody, breathing heavily, and watching Dorian with, Dorian noted, interest; his lone opponent was lying on the floor with what John noticed was broken bones.  

“Are you all right?” Dorian asks. John’s a little too occupied with cop stuff like seeking out the suspect they came here for and didn’t respond, leaving Dorian with no choice but to do a quick scan of John’s vitals.

He seems unharmed, his vitals exactly what Dorian would have expected - adrenaline, an elevated heartbeat, the endorphins released by what John would call an exhilarating fight. But there’s also arousal, in the dilation of his eyes, in the blood flowing to strange parts of his body, in the way that Dorian could almost _read_ the anticipation in his body.

Perhaps, Dorian hypothesizes, John likes the exhilaration of a good fight. The human has a chronic inability to walk away from a confrontation; it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suppose he liked the rush of adrenaline and danger. Perhaps he’s aroused by the fight, by the pain, by the atmosphere.

Or perhaps this data fits with a pattern Dorian’s begun establishing, a pattern that begin when he’d flipped a car.

That, too, he files away as something to ponder later, as the needs of the moment take over and he focuses his attention on what they came here for.

The third time confirms that Dorian’s data does, indeed, fit into a pattern. His brain was programmed to look for patterns – synthetic soul or no, his analytical qualities were above that of the average human being, and he noticed coincidences, trends, sequences, causes and events, where a human might only shrug and pass on. By itself, John’s arousal in a particular situation meant little, a scientific anomaly, perhaps. But three times, in situations that bore similarities to each other, similarities easily noticed by the analytical side of Dorian’s brain – well, three times was the charm.

In fact, considering how often the two of them ended up getting into danger, Dorian was surprised he hadn’t noticed the pattern earlier. As it was, it took him a couple of weeks from the discovery of the initial piece of data to finalize his hypothesis, and it happened because criminals had an affinity for explosive devices.

Seconds before this particular explosive device was about to blow, Dorian processed what was about to happen (slow! Too damnably slow for his abilities!). “ _Run!”_ he yelled at John, and it was a testament to their partnership that John listened. They ran for cover, but not fast enough, and in a last, desperate attempt, Dorian dove, covering John’s human body with his own more durable one. He felt shrapnel sinking into his back, an occurrence he noted with interest but without pain.

“Are you all right?” he asked John as silence fell around them.

John didn’t respond, and Dorian looked closely at the detective. He seemed fine, and it was only now that he realized how intimately close they were. Intimately close in a strange parody of the way their bodies molded together when they kissed and their hands roamed. But different, too, with Dorian pinning John to the ground, helpless beneath him, both his body and his hands insistent in keeping him still, immobile.

John didn’t answer, though he was conscious, his wide eyes staring at Dorian. Alarmed, Dorian scanned him, the act an instinctive one. His body flooded with relief at noting that John was unharmed; beyond the surprise and shock and ringing in his ears (which probably accounted for his lack of response), no harm done. But again, beneath the excitement and adrenaline, there was something else, too, a different set of responses visible to Dorian’s scanners. And, Dorian realized, as he looked at John with his vision rather than his sensors, that arousal was clearly visible without sophisticated equipment, in John’s eyes, in the way his hands has gripped Dorian’s arms, almost as if he wanted to continue this intimacy.

This time, instead of filing away the occurrence in his memory, he filed it away in the part of his brain where he kept a lengthy, robotic version of a to-do list. Assuming both of them got off this case alive, he had a working theory, extrapolated from pieces of data, and he would very much like a chance to test his hypothesis.

…

They do, as it turns out, get out of this case alive. It turns out to be a contract killer, intent on preserving his identity as well as clearly eliminating his targets. It involves Dorian throwing himself in front of a bullet and a congratulations/dressing-down from Maldonado about reckless risk-taking, but, in the end, they’re home safe.

They go for each other. It’s become their routine, after a case; each needs to feel the other’s body against his own, the reassurance that his partner is safe, sound, here. That something they have, born of wading together through danger, throws them close, and they cling to each other. They kiss, fast and desperate, and Dorian enacts his plan.

He slams John against a wall, hard, and John lets out a surprised sound as the wall collides with his back. Dorian holds him there, continuing to read John’s vitals as he always does, and the spike in arousal is immediate and obvious. John parts his lips in surprise, but before he has time to get a word out, Dorian seals his lips with his own. He monitors John’s body as he kisses him, his enjoyment of the kiss conflicting not-at-all with his more analytical observations. John’s hips stutter towards his; even held immobile, his body seeks Dorian’s, not simply aroused but also excited, expectant.

With a smooth movement, Dorian gathers John’s wrists, pinning each against his head. The motion, so simple Dorian barely dedicates any processing power to it, evokes another surge of arousal that floods John’s bloodstream. Pleased, Dorian smiles into the kiss they’re sharing. He prolongs the kiss, carefully monitoring John’s levels of oxygen – he can’t have his human pass out on him, after all. He does like John right at the edge, though, breathless from being kissed but not quite fainting, and when his sensors remind him that the oxygen in the human’s bloodstream is no longer at optimal levels, he finishes with a quick bite to John’s lower lip. The action elicits a small, pleased huff of breath from the human.

Encouraged, Dorian gathers both of the human’s wrists into one hand, pinning them still as he allows his other hand to slide down to John’s chest, whether to feel the heartbeat he can already sense or to hold him even more still, he does not know. That, too, is a motion requiring but an afterthought, and he melds their lips together as he adjusts their position so.

Then John begins to struggle. It’s completely wasted effort: John has no chance of getting free and he knows it. Nevertheless, he resists Dorian’s grip where his fingers are biting into the human’s wrists and holding them still. He twists beneath Dorian, attempting to resist the immoveable weight. And yet, strangely, he continues to return Dorian’s kiss, his arousal not tempered by his struggle.

Confused, Dorian breaks away.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, feeling lost at the conflicting signals.

“No, don’t – don’t stop.” John’s voice is hoarse; there’s just not quite enough breath in his body to give it its full strength, and Dorian eyes him with more confusion.

“Why are you struggling?” he asks.

John tilts his face away from Dorian, looking embarrassed. He’s not blushing, but Dorian can tell the embarrassment creeping up on him, the blood threatening to redden his cheeks.

Dorian stares at him, taking it all in.

“You like being helpless,” he says, surprised, though pleasantly so.

John raises his eyes tentatively to Dorian’s face, and that’s all the confirmation Dorian needs.

He doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand it at all. He doesn’t get the appeal of fighting a losing battle or the arousal that experience evokes. Especially not in a man like John, who picks fights and flies recklessly into danger and will never take no for an answer. John’s belligerent, assertive, infuriating, and yet somehow willing to surrender all of those things to Dorian.

He doesn’t have the foggiest understanding of it.  

But, as he’s discovered with John, understanding comes with time. There are many human idiosyncrasies that he’d never grasped until he spent his days with the detective, allowing understanding to leak slowly into his brain through exposure. . This, too, he thinks he’ll catch on to in time and with experience.

It’s that experience he pursues. Ignoring the tentative, almost shy look in John’s face, he resumes the position he’d broken away from, his hands finding their grip on human wrists as his lips seek John’s out again. The effect is immediate, a jolt of arousal shooting like electricity through the human body as John resumes his fruitless struggle. Dorian almost gets lost in each of the responses of John’s body; he finds himself experimenting, tightening his already-tight grip around the human’s wrists, changing the angle and pressure, adjusting the pressure he allows his own body to exert on John.

Like this, John is exposed, vulnerable to any deep, dark desire Dorian might have. The idea is infinitely tempting, and Dorian allows himself to give in to that temptation. Breaking away for only a millisecond, he hefts John’s body into his arms easily. John makes an undignified sound of surprise, but allows himself to be carried.

When they reach the bedroom, Dorian deposits John’s body onto the bed with equal ease, before climbing on it to tower above the human body splayed beneath him. Again, he pins John’s wrists, and this time the detective barely struggles, pinned down by the android’s weight. He’s exposed again, his body lying spread-eagled with a delicious expanse of skin that is all Dorian’s. John is helpless, and Dorian could do _anything_ with it. Anything, like kiss every single inch of it while John squirms beneath him, begging Dorian to “ _please – fuck – I need_. _”_ He can ignore John’s every plea for relief and instead suck on every sensitive spot he’s found on John’s body until he brings tears of need to the human’s eyes.

It’s intoxicating. Dorian’s never felt actual intoxication, but the thinks the effect might be similar.

 “You’re helpless, John,” he says. “I could do whatever I wanted, leave you desperate and unsatisfied for _hours_ and you couldn’t _do_ anything about it.”

“ _Dorian_ – “

“This is what you asked for, isn’t it?” Dorian can’t resist saying. Intoxication makes one say reckless things, after all, and he can’t resist this playful gloating, this revelry in the power that John’s never truly been able to give him before.

“Don’t you even think about it – “ John tries to protest, but it sounds half-hearted and unthreatening in his wrecked voice. Dorian laughs.

“What do you want, John?” he asks.

John’s eyes meet his. Dorian thinks he knows what John’s going to say.

“Can you – will you – “ he lets the words hang, uncertain.

“Say it, John.”

John stares at him, lips parted, for several seconds before he says the words.

“Fuck me.”

Dorian leans down, until his face is inches away from John’s. “Don’t you dare move a muscle,” he orders. Their eyes meet once again, and John nods. Satisfied, Dorian slips off the bed and walks into the bathroom, searching his way through several drawers. It takes a while (and he refuses to ask John; that would be inappropriate for the situation), but eventually he finds the lubricant that he knows John bought (he’d seen it, as much as John tried to hide it).

When he comes back into the bedroom, he stills in awe. John’s still spread-eagled on the bed, his skin flushed from excitement, with red blossoming all over his body from all those places Dorian’s lips had touched. He’s desperately hard, his cock beautifully erect even as the rest of John’s body is helplessly prone. His head is thrown back, his lips parted, their red matching that of John’s cheeks. His hands are placed, palm down, at each side, and a quick scan reveals him taking deep, slow, breaths, as he uses every ounce of willpower to remain still, his hands by his sides. His eyes are squeezed shut, and as he watches, John’s fingers dig into the sheets, clawing desperately at them to give them something to do besides give in to temptation.

It is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. Beautiful, astounding, because entirely his, given to him freely.

John clearly hears his steps, for his eyes fly open as Dorian approaches the bed. They’re almost completely dark, a beautiful, liquid dark color that Dorian could drown in. John doesn’t beg with words, but those eyes do it for him.

Dorian doesn’t waste time on formalities; he resumes his place on the bed, settling between John’s spread legs. He makes quick work of preparing John, who thrusts eagerly back onto his fingers until Dorian places a hand on his hip, easily holding him still. John whines in protest at that, but Dorian only smiles and lets his fingers dig a little deeper into the skin of John’s hip.  

When John’s prepared, Dorian slides in with one easy movement. John moans in relief as he feels Dorian fill him, and again attempts to thrust back, further onto Dorian’s cock. Again, Dorian holds him still. It’s easy, laughably easy, only the tiniest percentage of his strength required to hold John down against the mattress. He can tell the human is nearing the end of his endurance, though, and he wastes no more time teasing.

He fucks John. Holding him still, he thrusts into him so completely that, were John able to move, there would be no room for him to thrust back. Again and again, as his fingers adorn John’s hips with a pattern of bruises, he moves effortlessly, rocking the bed with each movement. The headboard creaks, the floor creaks, everything creaks as he fucks John into the mattress - not with every ounce of his strength (for that would surely kill him), but with every ounce of strength a human like John could endure.

It is more than enough. Each movement is like pressing a button, each button releasing a moan from John’s lips, each one sounding more surprised than the previous one. Despite being held immobile, John hasn’t stopped attempting to move; he thrusts back at Dorian while his hands claw at the bed and at Dorian until he gathers them up in one of his hands and holds those still, too, as he completes his task.

It doesn’t take long. Dorian monitors John’s body ever second of the way there, reads his orgasm creeping slowly up into his body and speeds up his movements by a fraction of a second. He can read, at the same time, the beginnings of pain as he continues to drive into John’s already exhausted, used, sensitive body. But, were John able to speak coherent thoughts, he would demand no mercy and Dorian obliges.

John comes, shaking, and Dorian watches the reactions of his body in awe. He takes in the sounds spilling from John’s lips, the way he spills all over himself, the way his muscles tense and then relax, the way that all the arousal in his body converges into this sweet release. He monitors the chemicals flooding his bloodstream, filling him with bliss and relaxation. He stares as John’s eyes flutter, his eyelashes so beautiful against his skin, and watches as John relaxes, sinking bonelessly into the mattress.

Dorian takes it all in in awe before closing his eyes and letting his own semblance of an orgasm take him. He cannot really come, not in the physical sense like John’s just done; the physical act in itself does not _feel_ like anything to him. But he is still programmed to feel pleasure, a strange kind of pleasure that he feels almost physically, coursing through his synthetic body, even as it’s elicited by no actual, physical sensation. No, it’s watching John, so vulnerable before him, then so human, succumbing to pleasure that only Dorian could give him, that coaxes forth his own reaction. It was John’s beauty, as he was helpless beneath Dorian’s hands, that made Dorian himself feel desperately out of control under the onslaught of his own sensations. He lets himself feel them, savors every moment of pleasure coursing through his body, before leaning forward to take his place next to John, tucked against the human body.

Eventually, John comes around from his haze of bliss. By the time he does, Dorian’s already managed to force himself to get up, leaving John’s side for those minutes necessary to clean them both off, before he pulls the blankets over the both of them. John lets out a content huffing sound and settles more closely against Dorian.

“Thanks,” he murmurs against Dorian’s skin.

Dorian runs a gentle hand through the human’s messy hair.

“My pleasure.”

John smiles, getting the joke, before taking the entirely human course of action of falling asleep.

….

It becomes a regular occurrence. Dorian fucks John on nearly every possible surface: against the wall, where he’d first held John immobile as he’d acted on his hunch. He holds John aloft easily, his fingers digging into the human’s skin. He doesn’t need to, could hold John without leaving a mark on his body, but they both want those telltale signs on John’s body for days afterwards.

He fucks John on the kitchen counter and the kitchen table, bends him over the back of the couch, forces him onto hands and knees on the floor, even once presses him face-first against the window.

John loves it all. For the first time, Dorian doesn’t need his sensors to tell him so. John begs and moans and thrusts back whenever Dorian doesn’t hold him still, pleading _“more_ ” like a broken record and offering his body up to the extent of his ability.

 Dorian is happy to oblige. He revels in the power John gave him. Not in a power-hungry sort of way, but in a still-shocked sort of way. After weeks, he still can’t not quite believe how much John is willing to surrender to him. And though the experience continues to be exhilarating and intoxicating, he still does not understand, even after weeks.

Eventually the curiosity and the frustration of not knowing build up, growing with each coupling of theirs. Every time he revels in the way that John _allows_ it all, he drowns, too, in the unknown of why. John still does not explain, perhaps thinks he didn’t need to or hopes that he can get away with it.

Slowly, Dorian builds up the courage to ask. John is always pliant and open after sex; when they lie in bed together after the act (which they always do, regardless of where they’ve fucked), John always manages to find a way to offer Dorian a piece of emotional vulnerability before drifting off to sleep.

They lie like that now, the lights off, Dorian’s arm around John’s cooling, relaxed form. He gathers up the courage to give voice to his question.

“Why do you want to be – helpless?” he asks tentatively.

He feels John shift beside him, turning his face away to make the confession bearable. John may have found a way to open up, but that does not mean he found it easy.

“Because I trust you,” he says quietly. The answer does not follow logically from the question, and Dorian knows that John will explain, but he thinks that even if John does not, these words are enough.

Dorian knows about Anna. Aside from his former partner, Pelham, Anna was likely one of the only people John trusted, and also the one that betrayed him. From his own basic understanding of human psychology, it had seemed all but reasonable that John would probably not trust again, or, at least, not for a long, long time. John had already shown all the typical human responses to betrayal, among them all the signs of pushing away anyone who got close.

It was why Dorian had never done anything more than hope madly that somehow, one day, John might offer him some specter of confidence, even if he was too broken to truly trust again.

He’s so lost in those thoughts, in the enormity of the feeling they send through him, that John’s voice comes as a surprise when he continues to speak.

“There’s something…exhilarating…about – surrendering – that much power to you. I don’t know why, but it’s – almost intoxicating – to trust you that much. Only you.” His phrase is a stuttering conglomeration of words, uncertain, but Dorian does not mind. Those words carry the information that puts his entire body on edge.

“You trust me,” he repeats, savoring the feel of their words, savoring their truth. He likes the taste of this particular truth, he thinks.

“I do,” John admits, and that seems to be the extent of heartfelt confessions he’s able to make for the night. Dorian doesn’t mind. He knows all he needs to know, for now.

It is, he thinks, his turn to offer the same.

“I will never hurt you,” he offers. “I will always protect you. I promise.”

John finally turns to face him again.

“I know,” he says with a smile.

He allows himself to rest his head below Dorian’s, and falls asleep with the android’s body as a pillow. Dorian wraps his arms around him, driven by a protective instinct he is unsurprised to discover in his programming. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the one that the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag applies to. Please be aware of that.
> 
> This chapter - and, in fact, much of the ensuing fic, since it all started with this chapter - was inspired partially by the "crypt scene" between Dean and Castiel in Supernatural 8x17. In some ways, Dorian and John were too perfect a parallel for me not to be inspired by that scene, and soon the story took on a life of its own.

Dorian isn’t sure if it’s coincidence, or perhaps their personal life bleeding into their professional one, but their professional relationship seems to improve. They work together better than they ever had, playing expertly off each other’s strengths. Dorian comes to trust John’s intuition, his instincts, his sense of righteousness, while John learns to rely on Dorian without a moment’s thought. He knows what a vast arsenal of information and skills Dorian has programmed into him, and he’s quick to use them and trust them. He no longer asks Dorian to cover him – he knows the android will do it. Dorian, for his part, usually knows what John will ask before he does it.  They’ve developed expressions and hand signals to communicate wordlessly, but most of the time they don’t even need them. They just _know._

It reflects on their effectiveness. Even Maldonado’s impressed, which is why she assigns them one of the more thorny and difficult cases.

Someone’s been killing police officers. More specifically, androids have been targeting police officers, and police officers specifically. MXs, DRNS, sex bots – every model in existence seems to be in on it, and the random killings continue. Tension in the department rises, giving fuel to those officers who’d long been protesting against the use of “synthetics.” Cops become wary of their partners. The public begins to question police effectiveness, pointing out the flaws in the police’s main line of defense against crime. The department’s MX’s are treated with suspicion, and Dorian does not manage to be an exception.

Naturally, Stahl and Maldonado stick up for Dorian. John refuses to hear a word against his partner; he even decks the man who tried to say one. He gets suspended for several days, and though Dorian rolls his eyes in mock frustration, he’s secretly touched. He spends the several days of John’s suspension at home with him.

When they return to work, it’s to encounter a stressed and tired Maldonado.

“I can only protect Dorian for so long,” she admits to John and him. The department’s been cutting back their use of MX’s, placing limits on their programming as well as safeguards. Dorian’s programming is different, more complex. There’s been talk that that makes him even more dangerous, less prone to safeguards. “We need to crack this case, John.”

“We will,” John insists. “No one’s taking my partner away from me.”

…

Miraculously, they find a lead. One of the bots that went “crazy,” as John terms him, is caught and de-activated after he kills two cops. They find him in Rudy’s lab, lying prone and expressionless on a steel table.

“Well?” John demands.

“I’m, um, having trouble accessing his – his programming,” Rudy sighs dramatically. “It’s delicate work, I can’t guarantee perfection _every_ time, you know.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Dorian offers eagerly.

They all know that a direct android to android connection will be more effective than any kind of programming analysis Rudy could do, “genius as I am,” Rudy adds.

John is the first to protest.

“Dorian – “

“We need to get to the bottom of this, John,” Dorian cuts him off. He knows exactly what John’s going to say; that doesn’t stop John from saying it.

“Whatever drove that droid wacko could mess with your programming too, Dorian.”

“It’s a risk we have to take – “

“You don’t know what’s in his head! There could be a virus that messes with your synthetic soul or shuts you down or something. We don’t know what’s going to happen!”

“John, if I don’t, then it’s probably only a matter of weeks until I’m deactivated anyway. We _have_ to do this.”

“Well, _be careful,”_ John growls angrily at him.

Dorian nods. That suggestion, too, is patently predictable.

“I’ve added several protective subroutines to my programming so that whatever’s in his head doesn’t affect mine.”

He places a hand on the inactive droid’s head, connecting his memory to his own as he analyzes it.

“Well?” John demands.

“It’s a piece of programming, that overrides all other functions, telling them to kill police officers,” Dorian explains.

“How does it – “

“I don’t know how it gets transferred,” he answers before John’s begun the question.

“I’m okay,” he adds, before John can even ask.

….

That leaves them with little more to go on; the knowledge that it’s, in a sense, an epidemic among robots does little to tell them where it started and where they should look. Frustrated and lead-less, they spend the rest of the day in the office, pursuing dead ends until the sky darkens outside the windows. John’s place beckons, and they return to its familiar expanse. By the time they get home, John’s nearly vibrating with tension. He just needs to get it all _out,_ and it’s a relief when Dorian seems to read his thoughts and slams him against a wall. He needs Dorian to hold him like this, to have his way with him so that he can throw all of his anger and rage and desperation into this particular useless fight. He parts his lips, ready for the kiss he knows will come.

But when John looks into Dorian’s eyes, they’re not the same. Instead of the usual gentleness, their grey is cold, hard, steely. Dorian’s face, usually full of a smiling kindness even when he’s not actually smiling, is a cold, hard mask. It looks so very, very wrong, and John barely has the time to mouth his partner’s name questioningly before Dorian’s fist collides with his face.

He sees stars as pain explodes throughout his face. It’s a harder punch than a human could land, though, John notes, still not the full extent of Dorian’s strength.

“I’m sorry, detective, but this must be done.” The words come from Dorian’s mouth, spoken in his voice, but they have no inflection, no humanity to them. They’re clinical and dispassionate.

“Dorian!” he protests with a sinking feeling in his chest. It all seems so patently familiar, and it clicks into place in but a second. The fact that Dorian had accessed the other, murdering, android’s memory; their pattern of indiscriminately killing police officers; Dorian’s unique programming, which would could react in unknown ways to a new command routine, despite firewalls and countermeasures.

He attempts to struggle as Dorian gathers his wrists; his fingers press into the very same bruises those hands had left the day before, as Dorian had fucked a struggling John against the wall. “More,” John had pleaded, as Dorian’s fingers sank into his skin. “Please – “

The android’s fist collides with his solar plexus, once, twice, knocking the breath out of him. Each punch is as cold and dispassionate as Dorian’s voice. There’s no rage, no feeling, only the cold efficiency of a synthetic.

And yet his movements are slow. Too slow, perhaps. It gives John a hope.

“Dorian, you can _fight_ this,” he insists “Fight it!” he shouts just before Dorian’s fist lands again. He can feel the blood running down his face from where the inhumanly hard fist had collided with his face, but he ignores it.

Dorian doesn’t respond to the words, only holds John tighter as the detective struggles, helpless. The blows land, one after another, barely allowing John the breath to gasp Dorian’s name desperately in between them. The blood pounds through his ears in addition to pouring down his face, and the adrenaline courses through his blood, the only other thing keeping him standing besides Dorian’s inhuman strength.

Eventually, though, his legs buckle under the force of Dorian’s blows and he sinks to his knees on the floor of the living room. The position is almost familiar – he’d been in this exact spot on hands and knees days ago. Dorian’s hands even sink into his hair, pulling it back to bare his throat in exactly the same way he’d done two days ago, when Dorian had titled his head back to give him a rough bite to the neck. The bruise from it is still there, blossoming on his skin where neck met shoulder. But this time, Dorian’s hands pull harder, nearly bringing unwilling tears to his eyes. He unsheathes a knife (John’s knife, he thinks absently), holding it against John’s throat.

 “Good-bye, Detective Kennex,” he says coolly.

John watches the knife, feels the cold steel press against his burning skin, and makes a last, desperate attempt. He says those words which, more than any others, have a chance to break Dorian out of this.

“Dorian, I trust you,” he pleads.  

The world stills for a moment, the cold threat at John’s throat as immobile as Dorian’s face. Blue lights flicker on his left cheek as his grey eyes seem to glaze over. He pauses, like a machine recalibrating, before the knife clatters from his hand. He releases the grip on John’s hair, and without the painful support that had provided, John sinks in a heap on the floor. Rolling over onto his back, he stares dazedly at the ceiling and tries to breathe through his broken ribs.

Somewhere far away, beyond the ringing in his ears and the stars in his eyes and the pain blinding out his vision, he hears his name being called again and again. It’s Dorian’s voice. Blinking, he sees Dorian’s concerned face through the fog before losing consciousness. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always thought that being almost completely beaten to death by the person you trust more than anyone else in the world is going to leave some serious psychological scars. I don't think it's something to be easily shaken off, and I wanted to explore the repercussions - for both John and Dorian, as well as for their relationship - these psychological scars would have. That's what the next few chapters will be. Again, though, I might emphasize the happy ending that'll follow all the angst (and, yes, fair warning, lots of angst!)

He wakes up in the hospital. The walls are white, the sheets are white, the window blinds are white, everything is white and clinical and he thinks maybe he’s woken up in some twisted parody of Heaven.

“John.” Maldonado’s there, looking tired, and he tries to raise his eyebrows in surprise and fails at contorting his face painlessly. It wasn’t uncommon for a cop to land in the hospital, and she never made it a habit to pay personal visits – unless she had a very good reason to.

“Dorian?” he demands.

She skips the formalities – she’d never really been one for formalities – to answer him.

“In Rudy’s lab. Rudy’s seeing how much information he can get on what happen and then he’s set to be deactivated.” She looks, for the first time that he’s known her, lost for words. “John – “

 “He’s not getting deactivated!” John protests, sitting up. Several monitors start beeping loudly, but he doesn’t give a damn.

“John – “

“It wasn’t his fault, any of it, do you hear me? We have to get him back, we have to!”

Maldonado looked at him, almost pityingly, but she didn’t protest.

“I need him,” John added. It was an emotional admission that he’d never meant to make to his Captain, but she was the one, after all, who had said, in the very beginning, “he’s special.” She understood.

“Both you and he have an excellent record. That could work in your favor. But, John – “ she sighed, looking even more tired. “I’m going to need proof that he’s safe _and_ useful, irrefutable proof. You know what the attitude towards the androids are right now. It’s going to be hard work, and it better pay off, _fast_.”

“We got a lead when Dorian – when he – attacked me,” John insisted. “He’s the key to understanding this whole thing. With him, we can crack it.”

Maldonado nodded, and John couldn’t really tell whether she believed him or just looked like she wanted to.

“I’m betting everything on you making this work, John,” she told him. “You have one shot to prove that I haven’t made a bad call.”

John nodded.

 “Can I talk to Rudy?”

…

A seemingly interminable amount of time later, Rudy shows up. He looks obviously out of place anywhere that’s not his lab, and his hunched-over, eccentric figure seems more than out of place in the clinical orderliness of the hospital. Nevertheless, he bounces into John’s room, bumping into several nurses on the way and excusing himself with long-winded explanations.

“Rudy!” John barks as he’s within earshot. The roboticist jumps, before scurrying over to John’s bedside and not failing to bump another nurse in the process.

“Rudy.” John sits up and gets straight to the point. “Talk.”

“Well, um, I seem to have isolated the, uh, the source of the problem,” he begins tantalizingly.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“It’s exactly what happened to the other bots. Their programming was tampered with until it told them to kill the closest target that met all the criteria. That happened to be you.”

“Tampered with how?”

“When Dorian accessed the other bot’s memories,” Rudy explained. “There was a virus, an awfully contagious thing, virtually undetectable, too, they meant it to spread as far as possible. It’s an insidious little thing, there’s no telling how many bots it’s gotten into – “

“Rudy,” John interrupted. “Dorian.”

“Ah, yes, well – I – he’s deactivated now, as you know, but I think I’ve managed to, well, clean out his system, so to speak, he should be fully functional again – “

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

Rudy nodded. “It’s the kind of virus that’s clever because it’s so well-hidden, so virtually invisible. Once we know what it is we know how to guard against it. It’s not going to get into him again, I’ve built what one might say the necessary defenses.”

“Good.”

A silence fell between them. Rudy glanced around the room awkwardly, not sure how to continue the conversation. There was a subject to be broached, he knew, the one Maldonado had brought up, but he didn’t want to touch it and it seemed Rudy didn’t either.

Finally, when the silence started to weigh on them with a physical burden, John broke it.

“Is there a way to guarantee it won’t happen again? You know, guarantee in the way those bureaucrat higher-ups would like?”

“Well….” Rudy threw him a hesitant glance. “He’s not going to like it and neither are you.”

“It’s better than him being deactivated, so spit it out,” John demanded.

“Well,” Rudy ventured. “I could install a sort of – voice command override; you could choose a phrase that, when spoken, would  - would effectively shut him off. A safety switch, if you will.”

John sighed. He didn’t like it, and neither would Dorian. He didn’t need to be Dorian’s partner to know that.  

“Do it,” he ordered.

Rudy nodded in agreement.

“What should I make the – the safeword?” he asked, and John wondered if he knew the context in which that word was usually used.

John told him.

…

In the long, cold hours that follow, John finds himself wishing for Dorian’s presence more than ever. Nothing would fill these big, empty rooms better than his warm smile, his laughter and off-hand quip, his off-key singing and sass. John finds himself imagining that Dorian is there, by his bedside, in synthetic sleep mode, perhaps, but there. It’s what makes it bearable when he tries to close his eyes and sleep. It’s what lets him forget that Dorian’s lying deactivated in a room perhaps as coldly clinical as this one, in a messy basement lab, as a robot doctor toils over him. His one reassurance is that Rudy loves his work, throws himself into it as a paramedic does into saving lives. If anyone can save Dorian, it’s he.

Days pass. John wants to get out of the hospital as soon as he can – he’s not _that_ hurt, damn it, he insists – but they keep him there for those several days. He knows Maldonado’s dealing with paperwork and paper-pushers who see Dorian as a liability, and he spends every second of every day in agony, wondering if this second they’ll decide to deactivate Dorian without even telling him. He attempts to break out of the hospital, but they catch him.

Eventually, _finally,_ Maldonado calls him. She’s curt and to the point.

“I have it sorted out. Don’t fail me, John.”

“I won’t,” he promises.  “Can I see him?”

It takes a few more calls, a couple of MX’s (screened by Rudy to make sure they haven’t been infected) posted outside his door, but they let Dorian in.

He looks up, sees – actually sees – Dorian for the first time since that terrible ordeal. He’s put on a brave smile, but it doesn’t quite touch his eyes, tempered as it is by clearly-written guilt. Still, John doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more welcoming sight, and he smiles broadly in a way he hopes is encouraging.

“Dorian.”

Dorian pulls up a chair by John’s beside, though he keeps his distance, afraid, perhaps, of those last inches of space between them.

“It’s good to see you,” he admits, and watches as Dorian looks away.

When Dorian finally meets his eyes, they look broken.

“I’m sorry, John,” he says. He takes in everything around him – the beeping machines, the endless wires coming out of John’s wrists, the bruises and bandages still covering the human. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey.” John reaches out, taking Dorian’s synthetic hand in his own. “It wasn’t your fault.” Dorian looks unconvinced, and John supposes it’ll take a long time to convince him. He can accept that, he supposes.

“We’ll get through it,” he says, reassuringly, he hopes. “I just need you here.”

Dorian stares at him for a second, in disbelief, perhaps, as his processors process the words. Finally, he nods.

“Whatever you need,” he agrees.

….

 Dorian accompanies him as soon as he’s released from the hospital, helping him along. He’s still weak and bruised, walking painfully, and Dorian hovers by his side protectively. John doesn’t have the heart to swat him away. He knows his partner with a bleeding heart needs to assuage his guilt by showering care on John, and he accepts it for what it is.

They get back to John’s apartment. To the place where it all happened, which, John realizes, he hasn’t seen since it happened.

Suddenly, it all comes rushing back. Those memories that John had successfully repressed and avoided thinking about all come crashing down on him, and he stills, attempting to process them. He takes a few steps forward, surveying the kitchen, the living room, the wall, as he’s hit with memories. He feels the fear and the flight instinct kick in, and he whirls on the man behind him, ready to fight.

“John?” Dorian’s look is obviously concerned. He moves swiftly towards John, and it’s that simple motion that sends John over the edge and back into that horrible scene.

“No, don’t – “ he says, stepping back, but Dorian either misunderstands or seems to think that his presence next to John is the best thing. In any case, he steps forward with even more haste, raising a hand to support John, and it’s that hand that held him while that fist broke his bones, it’s that body, _that face_ , and Dorian’s still coming towards him and not stopping and it sends him into a blind panic –

“Synthetic off!” he manages to shout. Dorian freezes, his body becoming an immobile statue, and John breaks down completely.  He holds on to the counter, sucking in air that refuses to make its way through his body. Dizziness overpowers him until he sinks to the floor, just breathing.

It shouldn’t be this bad, it was never this bad with the ambush and Pelham’s death. But there, it was different. It was part and parcel of his job, to be stowed away with all of the terrible things he faced on a daily basis. This was their home, their place of safe intimacy, this was _Dorian._ It couldn’t be stowed and hidden away because it was what he lived on.

He attempted to breathe some more. Inhale-exhale. Inhale-exhale. It did little good, and he clutched he counter even tighter, his knuckles whitening around it. He could get through this, he told himself. Dorian was right there, and he needed to get through this and activate him again. It was only his subconscious, his stupid, irrational subconscious. He wasn’t _actually_ scared of Dorian, didn’t _really_ think his partner would hurt him again. And yet, still, every look at Dorian, at their home, triggered memories of what happened, unexpectedly, without warning, and which therefore _could_ happen.

He closed his eyes and counted to ten. Another stupid technique given to him by a therapist, but at this moment, it was all he had left.

Finally, he gathered himself enough to face Dorian’s frozen body. Taking a deep breath, he uttered the counterparts to the words he’d spoken earlier.

“Synthetic on.”

Dorian blinks, taking in his new surroundings; he takes a fraction of a second to adjust to the change, before the gears in his brain turn and he seems to know exactly what happened.

“John?” he asks, concerned, though remains standing where he was.

“I’m sorry, I – “ he avoids looking at Dorian, looks anywhere but Dorian, at the kitchen cabinets and the wall behind him. “I panicked.”

“What happened?” Dorian asks, nothing but concern in his voice. John had told him the nature of the override Rudy had installed, but he hadn’t even suspected that this might be one of its possible uses. Somehow, though, Dorian didn’t seem surprised.

“I saw you coming toward me and I – “

“You remembered what I’d done to you,” Dorian finished for him.

John started to protest, wanting to insist that it wasn’t him, it wasn’t something _Dorian_ had done, but that was the problem, wasn’t it?

He took a deep breath before speaking.

“When it – when it happened, it was –it came out of nowhere. One minute you were you, you were smiling and joking just being _you_ and then – then you weren’t. I didn’t even notice it happen, there was no warning, you were just – “ he broke off, unable to finish the sentence, unable to say the words of what Dorian had actually _done._ “And now every time I look at you, and smile, and come close, there’s a part of me that thinks that you could turn into _him_ again, without warning – “

He’d never wanted to spill this much to Dorian. His fears were his own, his weaknesses as well. Dorian did not need to be burdened with them, but Dorian also deserved to know. He owed this explanation to Dorian.

 “I understand, John,” Dorian said quietly – soothingly. “My very presence is a trigger.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, conceding his dignity to his guilt. “I don’t fear you. My subconscious does, because I can’t get it out of my _head,_ Dorian!” He looked at Dorian, desperate, whether for Dorian to understand or begging for to be helped out of this, he didn’t know. “It was your face, your voice – your – your hands, the hands that held me, they were- “ again he broke off before he could utter the words for the act itself. “And I kept looking at your face and trying to see _you_ in there but all I saw was someone who wasn’t _you,_ Dorian - “

“John,” Dorian interrupted. “I _understand._ I’m not offended. And I, too, am sorry. That I did not fight it harder, that I did not succeed earlier – “

“Don’t be an idiot,” John snaps at him. “If you hadn’t fought it I’d be dead – “

 “But I could’ve fought harder and then you wouldn’t be hurt-“

 “Stop it!” John thunders.

They glare at each other in the momentary silence that ensues. The space between them feels like a deep valley, filled with guilt and fear, the right to which they argue over like two enemies.

 “We will have to proceed carefully,” Dorian offers. “You must tell me what you need, John. That is how we move forward from this.”

“Okay,” John agreed. “But I don’t want to be pampered. That won’t help.”

Dorian smiles, that crooked, entertained smile of his that John’s missed so much.

 “Of course not, John,” he said.

In the infinitely more comfortable silence that follows, John delves further into the kitchen, pulling out the ingredients of his long-awaited dinner.

“You want to help cook?” he shoots at Dorian as he pulls meat out of the freezer.

“Sure.”

Dorian moves toward him – slowly, non-threateningly, John notes without remarking on it to Dorian – to take his place beside John on the cutting board, slicing deftly through the vegetables John had set out. Dorian didn’t need to eat, of course, and for that reason had no real need to know how to cook, but still he slices through the tomatoes with a machine-like precision that frustrates John, , because he could never slice _his_ vegetables perfectly without squirting tomato pulp over everything.

Dorian seems to know what he was thinking.

“Watch and learn. You might manage to pick up something,” he said as the knife sliced through lettuce.

“Heh,” is all the retort John can muster as he fires up the grill and the ventilation system. There’s a slow pleasant feeling creeping up on the inside of his chest at how normal this feels, and he thinks maybe they’ll make it through this. He throws several patties on the grill, then realizes that he’s watching Dorian as he does so, keeping a careful eye on the android’s hand – and on the knife he holds. He tries to shake off the instinctual wariness, but it doesn’t budge. The warmth in his chest putters out, leaving a void. His body begs him to step away from the android with the knife, but he forces himself to stay put, almost shoulder to shoulder with Dorian even as his body protests.

If Dorian notices anything (which is likely), he doesn’t remark upon it, a fact for which John is thankful.

They cook the rest of the meal in silence, with Dorian helping set the table as John continues to man the grill. Dorian didn’t eat, of course, but he could still consume food, and he insists that he can perform some variation of ‘tasting,” though it doesn’t have quite the savor of the human experience.

With the food done, John quickly sets the table, placing the two plates across from each other on the table.

Dorian looks at him. John blinks back, looks at the table, and realizes what he’s done.

They usually sit side-by-side, shoulder to shoulder, almost, as they eat and talk. Subconsciously, though, John had clearly longed for Dorian to be further from him, with the safe space of the table between them. John reaches for the plate, meaning to set it next to his own, but Dorian stops him.

“It’s okay,” he says, and John bites down the “I’m sorry” that comes unbidden to his lips.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, both unsure how to broach the space between them. The guilt hangs in the air, and they both pull at it in a strange game of tug-of-war. There seems so much to talk about, and so little, so many words to spill, and yet somehow those words don’t make it through the guilt that fills the air.

After dinner, Dorian helps him clear away the plates, the two of them dancing a delicate dance around each other. Dorian’s movements are slow, almost comically so, as he stays a precise two steps away from John in filling the dishwasher. It makes John angry, because he doesn’t need to be pampered, damn it, but he bites down the retorts and protests every time he sees the careful, painstaking way Dorian moves, as if he’s putting every ounce of effort into thinking through every single one of his movements. John doesn’t have the heart to spew an angry retort at him for it.

Darkness had fallen as they’d eaten, and strangely, despite his days in the hospital, he finds himself feeling weary. He glances towards the bedroom, then guiltily towards Dorian.

“Would you like me to sleep on the couch or the spare bedroom?” Dorian breaks into his thoughts.

He opens his mouth, doesn’t quite know what to say; he can’t deny that Dorian is right, that he can’t stand the idea of Dorian’s inhuman body pressed against his in the dark.

 “I understand,” Dorian said, gently insistent.

 “The couch is fine,” John admits reluctantly. He moves towards the bedroom door, his leg accompanying his motions with an unhelpful creak. He glances back at Dorian as he walks – part guilt, and part wariness. The android stands where John had left him, watching as the human walks away, but offering no help with his synthetic limb.

“Good night,” John offers.

“Good night, John.”

He shut the door behind him and sinks wearily onto the familiar mattress to detach his limb with a sigh of relief. Then, in a clumsy, unpracticed skipping movement, he hops with the leg towards the charging station. He’d gotten used to not having to do this – this was a task Dorian had fulfilled for weeks now. Halfway there, he pauses, wondering if he should call for Dorian to help him with the rest, but pride (was it pride? All of it?) prevents him from it. Instead, he makes his painful, one-legged way to the charging station and plugs in the synthetic limb, which chirps happily.

 “Shut up,” he mutters at it.

He climbs into the bed, the mattress too large, too cold, too unfamiliar without another body next to him. He reaches over to the space usually occupied by Dorian, covering it with his arm, and sighs.

“Lights off,” he mutters, and attempts to shift his blankets into the semblance of another body beside him.

…

He’d finally gotten warm and comfortable and started drifting off to sleep when he saw Dorian. The android was smiling at him, his patent smile, and John couldn’t help smiling back. Then Dorian stepped closer, and closer, too close, filling the space on the bed as John scooted away desperately, and still Dorian kept smiling that smile.

“It’s all right, John,” he said softly, still smiling, as his fist came at John’s face.

John woke up, breathless, sweaty, and tangled in the blankets he’d wrapped himself around. He looked longingly at the other side of the bed, towards the prone figure that would comfort him from his nightmares. Then he remembered. Blinking in the dark, he remembered.

He shut his eyes, groaning. Every fiber of his being ached to call out to Dorian, to ask him to come, to be here. John didn’t need pampering, but he needed Dorian to _be here,_ like he always was when John woke up sweaty and breathless, dreaming of Pelham’s dead body and a ticking explosive with green lights.

But then he imagined Dorian walking into his room, his human-like figure looming in the dark. He thought of that strong, inhuman figure approaching his bed, with his face and his intentions hidden, coming towards John. John wouldn’t be able to see his face as Dorian approached, but he’d know it was Dorian, and he wouldn’t be able to tell what Dorian would do, if he would land another blow –

He shook his head, attempting to clear the thoughts.

It wasn’t fucking fair, he thought. They hadn’t taken Dorian from him, not really. Hadn’t killed him, hadn’t had him deactivated or kidnapped, hadn’t lured him away or even taken whatever affection he had for John. No, what they had killed was the thing between them, what they had killed was John’s sanity and their trust, until Dorian himself became a walking nightmare.

He punched the pillow where Dorian’s face would lie in anger. It wasn’t enough, especially with no leverage due to his prone position and no leg, and still he punched and punched at the empty pillow until, weak and breathless, he collapsed into it, panting.

“Fuck you,” he swore, at no one in particular and whoever did this to him. “I won’t fucking let you ruin this.”

With that mildly reassuring though, he burrowed into the pillows again and fell into a less fitful sleep. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I originally intended to focus on the impact that this would have on *John* and the PTSD and trauma he's already suffered, but as I wrote it ended up being more and more about Dorian. That seems to always happen - I start out writing from the human's perspective and end up writing from the android's. It's just so easy to write for Dorian that I get carried away. 
> 
> In any case, another warning for angst. It gets better soon, however, that I can promise.

They went back to work.

Everyone glared at Dorian as soon as he walked in. Dorian knew he couldn’t _actually_ feel their piercing glares on him, but he swore he could. The atmosphere was tense, taut, waiting to break. He could see it in the face of ever cop, in their every word, their every movement. The department also looked decidedly emptier, with fewer MX’s standing around the perimeter with their inhuman eyes watching everything.

And then there was him. The synthetic with a bleeding heart, whose bleeding heart had failed him. The synthetic who’d actually almost committed the crime every single other synthetic was deactivated for, parading around.

It was clear he was hanging on by something that didn’t even resemble a thread.

The upside of the entire fiasco, though, was that they had several new leads. Rudy had been able to examine Dorian, and something about the way the new programming had influenced him (and his damn synthetic soul, thought Dorian, wasn’t that synthetic soul there for a reason? Wasn’t it supposed to ensure he couldn’t be hacked like a simple computer?) was that they had an idea of where to start. A way to trace the virus itself.

It meant that John and Dorian didn’t have to spend too much time at the office, a fact they were both extremely grateful for. Instead, their itinerary involved an abandoned building, because apparently even highly advanced androids didn’t rise above common criminals in their choice of hideouts. They climbed out of the car, and John, being John, barged forward, drawing his gun.

“John,” Dorian warned.

“I’m going first,” he insisted.

Dorian nodded, drawing his own gun. The motion forced John to jump and begin raising his own gun before he realized what he was doing.

“I’ll cover you,” Dorian said, and he could swear that he registered a millisecond’s hesitant expression on John’s face before he agreed.

They enter the abandoned building, which turns out to be – well, abandoned. They scan for traces of – well, _anything._ Life, perhaps, insofar as the things they’re looking for are alive. They do a fruitless scan for DNA, though both of them know that the problem with hunting robots rather than humans is that they don’t _have_ DNA. They don’t leave fingerprints or smells; they also tend not to make mistakes.

In fact, robots tend to be unfortunately thorough, which means that John and Dorian are expected. They discover this fact when John trips a wire -  or rather, that’s when _he_ discovers it; Dorian sees it seconds earlier, and moves with the speed of lightning, pushing John away and landing on top of him just as the explosive detonates. He covers John’s body with his own, feeling (not for the first time) the shrapnel and the noise, but this time, when he raises himself from John’s body and scan’s the human’s vitals, something is definitely not right, despite Dorian’s protection.

John’s panicking. Besides the normal surge of adrenaline, his body is flooding with fear, his breathing too rapid and unhealthy for him to get oxygen through his body. It throws him off: the last time he’d covered John’s body with his own as an explosive shattered the air around them, he’d read arousal flooding through the human instead.

Dorian makes the connection in a millisecond and all but jumps away, rising.

“I’m sorry,” he says, remaining at a comfortable distance as John sits up. “I had to protect you.”

John nods, takes several deep, calming breaths.

“I’m okay,” he mutters. Dorian’s disbelief shows on his face and John snaps “I said, I’m _fine.”_

He rises, straightening and dusting off his clothes. The fear passes as quickly as it came, replaced with bottled anger.

 “Come on.” He gestures at Dorian. “Keep up,” he adds, when Dorian keeps a distance between them. “You don’t have to walk oneggshells.”

Dorian doesn’t try to argue.

They return to the precinct to encounter more glares at Dorian, and some at John, who’s still associating with “the murderous synthetic.” John clenches his fists in an attempt not to deck the guy who said it, and Dorian attempts to patiently ignore the words, but they sting, because they’re true. He _is_ the murdering synthetic, and what has just occurred with John is nothing but a reiteration of it. John’s been valiantly standing up for him at every moment, but perhaps, he thinks, it would be better if John simply let go.

They spend the rest of the day in fruitless arguments with Rudy. Or, rather, Dorian does, while John watches the two of them go at it, words flying between them as tempers rise. They go through every single thing they could try, agree on something that goes way over John’s head, and agree to a meeting the next morning. John tries to participate, but the complicated jargon makes little sense to him. He watches them argue instead, watches Rudy’s passion and sees the desperate way Dorian’s clinging to every possibility.

…

When they go home, it’s no less painful than the previous night. Dorian carefully keeps his distance, knowing the effect any of his movements could have on John. He watches the mounting anger in John every time he moves away and forces himself to ignore it. He watches painfully as John forces himself through every minute, notes the way that John keeps staring at the gun Dorian wears before Dorian takes it off and places it on the counter pointedly. John’s lips draw into a thin, angry line at the gesture, but he doesn’t say anything.

Dinner’s a silent affair. Dorian sets the table this time, placing his own plate across from John’s. The thin, angry line of John’s lips deepens, and he attempts to wrest the plate from Dorian and set it down next to himself until Dorian stares him down.

After they eat dinner, John settles on the couch to catch a soccer game he’d missed while in the hospital, and Dorian perches a safe distance away from him. John huffs angrily and moves towards Dorian, although Dorian can read his body going haywire with unpleasant responses to the proximity.

Dorian attempts to be patient through it all. It hurts, as physically as it can for a robot like him, every time his sensors show him John’s reactions. He’s taken to monitoring the human’s vitals all too often, ensuring that he can sense the humans’ fear before it comes, and the pang in his chest at John’s fear comes all too often. Worse than the pain of watching John suffer, though, is the knowledge that he’s the cause of it. The knowledge that he had not fought hard enough and had not resisted strongly enough. That John was hurt because _he_ had failed to act, had failed to protect his human, his partner.

His data-filled brain tells him that John’s reactions are exactly what are to be expected. He’s hypervigilant in response to the walking trigger that is Dorian, he’s wary, he’s having nightmares – in fact, he’s having all the textbook symptoms of a post-traumatic disorder.

The cold, clinical facts don’t make it any easier to bear, and sometimes Dorian tells him he deserves the pain. He deserves to suffer for what he’s done just as John is suffering from his experience.

The bedtime routine’s the same. Dorian knows where John wants him, but doesn’t go right away. Instead, he turns towards John, forcing a sentence on his lips. John tenses almost imperceptibly at the attention, and Dorian watches as John forces himself to ignore his body’s reaction and stand still, concentrating on Dorian.

It’s what tells him that he needs to say what he’s been planning on saying for most of today.

“John,” he says, softly. “I should leave.”

He’d expected the same anger and frustration that’s been John’s reaction for most of the day, but when John’s reaction comes, it isn’t rage or fury. It’s something else entirely.

“What?” John croaks. His expression is the very image of a shattered heart, and Dorian doesn’t think his synthetic body can bear it any more than John’s.

“I – I think that, right now, you’re better off without me,” he tries to explain.  

Surprisingly, John doesn’t argue. He doesn’t protest. He just asks – “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you leaving me?”

Dorian blinks.

“Look, I know I’m not – not quite right, and things aren’t how they used to be. I’m trying to fix it, I am, I’m sorry, please don’t leave – “ John pleads.

The words shatter him as he realizes how wrong a path he’s walked down, how distant his road is from the destination he sought.

 “John – “ Dorian says, softly, like trying to coax a frightened animal. Inadvertently, he takes a step before mentally slapping himself. He’d been so focused on John’s pain that he’d forgotten what that one step would do, and he can see the almost imperceptible reaction in John’s body to that one, slight movement.

 “Everyone leaves, Dorian!” John shouts at him. “Pelham’s dead, Anna betrayed me, and now you’re walking away. You, Dorian! Why?” he demands.

Dorian longs to close the distance between them, to pull John into his arms and soothe him with soft touches and gentle kisses. To whisper “it’s all right” and “I’m not going anywhere” into John’s ear while their bodies meld together, but that, he knows, would be the least comforting thing he could do. Some part of his mind registers the painful irony and files it away into his memory banks.

 “I don’t want to leave you, John,” Dorian says softly. “I want to help you. I want you to get better.”

“I’ll get better, and I don’t need your tiptoeing around me to do it!” John’s anger, now that it’s exploded out of the metaphorical bottle he’s kept it in, seems to see no bounds, until the full weight of it falls on Dorian. He almost revels in the painful way it crushes him.

“Okay, John.” Dorian agrees, because it’s all he _can_ do. “Okay.”

“Good,” John huffs. They glare at each other for a bit, but it’s nowhere near one of their good, old-natured glares. When neither of them breaks the silence, John stomps off to bed.

…

John wakes up in the middle of the night with the same nightmare of Dorian’s smiling face and his cold, hard fist.

He sits up in the dark, angry and terrified but mostly guilty. He feels so guilty that it stifles him, just like the darkness of his bedroom smothers him.

He lies back and stares at the ceiling (or what’s probably the ceiling, but he can’t see it in the dark), as he wonders how long they have. He’s pushing away the one person who truly cares, and he wonders how long he has before he’s pushed him away for good.

…

They continue to dance on eggshells for the next few days, which slowly add themselves up into weeks. John dances gradually closer, until the distance between them is intimate rather than wide, but still there is an empty space between their two bodies.

A couple weeks in, John makes the first, tentative step to close that space. In their kitchen, on the evening after a particularly stressful day (the one thread of a thread Dorian’s hanging on by is getting weaker, they’re still following false leads, everyone’s accusing Dorian of deliberately misleading them, and even Maldonado is at her wit’s end), John finally gathers up the nerve to ask Dorian for something.

 “Kiss me?”

Dorian stares. It’s more, so much more than John’s allowed him so far, and as much as he longs desperately to come near John again, to hold him close, the only response he can find in himself is guilt.

“John?” he asks.

“Please,” his partner begs. “I need this,” he says, and Dorian thinks that perhaps he needs it in a different sense than the physical one.

Carefully, he approaches, standing before John, though his hands remain at his sides. Carefully, he leans forward, pressing their lips together, but keeping the distance between their bodies. It’s a careful kiss above all else, and John seems to melt into it, though he makes no move to press their bodies closer than they already are. He’s not allowing himself to let go, that much is patently obvious from the wary posture that Dorian’s grown used to seeing on John on his hours on the job.

 If anything, the kiss is experimental. Not experimental in the sense of trying something new (though the first time he had tried a kiss, it had indeed been with John); no, it was experimental in the sense of testing the waters of a relationship that, sometimes, he felt he was drowning in, with nothing to guide him in the deep, confusing waters that buoyed both of them back and forth.

Still, he thinks and hates the thought, it’s a relief, to share this closeness they’ve both refused for so long.

 “I’d, uh…I’d forgotten how much I missed that,” John confesses when they break apart.

“I missed it too,” Dorian echoes him.

A silence follows his words. John makes no move to repeat what they’ve tried, and Dorian dares not press the advantage. He has no right to ask for more, however deeply he longs for it.

 “Thank you. I needed that,” John says.

His words have a finality to them, even as his face shows a struggle between determination, desire, and the knowledge that giving in to that desire will only bring fear, as much as he wills it away.

Dorian steps away, offering the distance between them again.

…

The next night, when Dorian offered his usual “good night, John,” before heading towards the couch, John made another tentative step into the space between them. He offered another request, the second he’d dared to voice since that time that had broken everything between them.

“Dorian – “ he began, unsure how to ask.

 “What would you have?” he asked.

“Help me?”

Dorian nodded. He followed John into the bedroom, where the detective pulled back the covers to sink into his bed. Dorian joined him on the mattress, his hand sliding gently to the place on John’s thigh where his synthetic limb was attached. He longed to move his hand up, further up, to more intimate places, to preserve this touch of their skin and caress the human, but that was not what John had permitted.

He deftly detached the synthetic body part, hefting it easily as he carried it to its charging stand.

When he was done, he stood by John’s bed, looking down. This was more vulnerability than John had allowed him in weeks. Without his leg, John was at an even greater disadvantage than he normally would be. Unable to walk or move effectively, he was helpless – exactly how helpless, it only struck Dorian in that moment, as he realized how much more John was offering him with that simple request for help.

That night, for the first time, Dorian had hope. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wraps up the "plot" of the fic, in that the main case that's been driving this whole thing gets wrapped up. However, my focus is (naturally) on the characters and their relationship rather than on the case itself, and so I"m afraid that the plotting part of it isn't particularly spectacular (then again, the show's episodes themselves are pretty sub-par in terms of plot so I get an excuse, right?)

John sighed. He took a deep gulp of perfect, sixty-five-degree, warmed-by-Dorian coffee, and wondered how much longer he’d have the luxury of his own coffee warmer. The thought brought a sour expression to his face, and Dorian raised his eyebrows.

“Your coffee not sweet enough, John?”

“You know I don’t take sugar,” John snapped.

“No, you like your coffee dark and bitter like your soul,” Dorian muttered, very, very clearly. John glanced up at him just fast enough to catch the smirk on Dorian’s face and share it, before it slid off his face. One way or another, he remembered, as a heavy weight settled in his chest, he probably wouldn’t be hearing Dorian’s jibes at him for much longer.

 “What are we going to do?” he asked, feeling like a small child who really, _really_ hoped his parents had all the answers.

“We’ll figure something out,” Dorian offered, almost as if it wasn’t his very life hanging on the line with this entire case.

John rubbed his eyes wearily. They’d just gotten out of a meeting with Maldonado, if by ‘meeting’ one meant ultimatum. Two more cops were dead, just last night, and the Chief of Police was pressuring department heads into getting rid of any potential liabilities. That included Dorian. “You have a day,” she’d said. “A day and a half at most. Then they’re going to start paperwork and procedures to have Dorian gone for good and believe me, this is going to be the one time where bureaucracy speeds things up.”

John shook the memory from his head. It wouldn’t help to have it hanging over him.

“You better have something specific in that fancy brain of yours,” he managed to retort in response to Dorian’s placating, “or there won’t be a fancy brain of yours left.”

Dorian watched him, the blue lights playing gently on his face, as if he was trying to figure out some very complicated formula written on John’s face. Strangely, he smiled.

 “What?” John demanded, suddenly self-conscious.

“Do you remember the time when you would’ve done everything in your power not to have a synthetic partner?” he asked.

“Yeah,” John said, not particularly happy at the reminder. “I was an idiot. I need you, Dorian.”

The blue lights on Dorian’s face changed their pattern, flashing haphazardly, excitedly. He held John’s gaze, and for just a few seconds there was just that between them, that gaze, that warmth.

Still, however, there was the space between them, and it wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t scared of Dorian, but there was still a strange _something_ that frightened him. And still, with every display of Dorian’s strength, fear flooded through his body as arousal once had. Even after all these weeks, there was a part of him that was scared when Dorian got too close.

But, he reminded himself, at least the part of him that feared that Dorian would walk away and leave behind that proximity forever seemed to be assuaged.

“So- “ he began.

“Rudy and I have been working on something,” Dorian began hesitantly.

 “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Just as quickly as it had come, the warmth between them was gone, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste of surprise.

“Because –“ Dorian sighed, looking weary, even though it was impossible for him to actually _be_ tired. “Rudy and I have been monitoring, well, some  black market android makers and some underground groups known for using bots to do their dirty work –“

“And?” John demanded.

“And the problem is that we don’t think humans are behind it. Robots are.”

“What?”

“They’re a group of androids who don’t like the way androids are treated by humans,” Dorian explained, “and they’re organizing. They want to start a war. Humans against synthetics.” Dorian voiced the last word with distaste.  

A spectrum of emotions flashed through John – surprise, shock even, some slight feeling of betrayal, anger –

“Do you understand what that means, John? For me? For us?” Dorian asked.

John looked at him, horrified.

“I didn’t tell you because I was hoping and – praying- that I was wrong. Because if it is synthetic against human, then what chance do I have? What chance do we have?”

 “So,” John ventured, “what do we do?”

….

They took a leaf out of Rudy’s book and went undercover, with, of course, the prerequisite argument before doing so.

“You’re not going alone!” John shouted at Dorian.

“You’re not coming with me!” Dorian shouted at John.

“It’s going to be dangerous for a human!” Dorian thundered.

“It’s going to be dangerous for you, too, and I’m not sitting around in my ass while you risk your life!” John roared.

As usual, they glared at each other. Dorian glared “no” at him and John glared “yes,” and eventually John out-glared Dorian.

“So, what do we do?” John finally ventured, when it seemed like Dorian would offer no more protests.

“Pretend we want to be on their side. It shouldn’t be too hard for me, pretending I don’t like the way I’m treated by the department.”

“Not that there’s going to be any pretending involved,” John put in, dryly.

Dorian snorted. “Not really. You, on the other hand – you’ll have to play the traitor cop who’s siding with the synthetics against his own kind.”

They held each other’s gaze, both aware that though John might be pretending, it is Dorian who will actually be siding against his own kind. The thought sent twinges of discomfort through John’s body, which he shoved far, far down.

“John,” Dorian added, as John made to step through the door. “They don’t take too kindly to humans.” (John nearly laughed hysterically at the phrase). “ _Please_ be careful. Follow my lead. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Me?” John asked. “I’m the paragon of wise decisions.”

His desperate attempt to lighten the mood of a desperate attempt only half-worked.

…

The group of androids they’re meeting have, thankfully, abandoned the cheap clichés of abandoned warehouses in shitty areas of town. They’re in a cold, clinical, empty building in one of the busier parts of town instead, likely leased to some made-up identity through some quick hacking. John stands beside Dorian, feeling disconcerted by the cleanliness and emptiness of the building itself. It’s not the kind of place he usually does undercover work, and it reminds him, more than anything, of the whitewashed hospital he’d woken up in. That, too, brings up some painful memories, and he shoves them away.

They’re meeting with three androids. John can’t tell the exact models – they look like MX’s, but seem to have slightly more individuality and independence than those. They stand formally, their limbs at strange, unnatural angles, in a geometrically-too-perfect line. John can’t tell who the leader is until he steps forward – one precise step – to speak.

“So…” His language is as clinical and precise as the room. He doesn’t drawl like a self-satisfied crime lord or impose the weight of his personality on his interlocutors. Nevertheless, John already feels crushed. Everything about this, the cold, empty room they’re in, the cold, dead eyes of the synthetics they’re meeting, and  their inhuman, expressionless faces, all feels so _familiar_ and so terrible, viscerally _wrong._ It’s a familiarity that sends his heartbeat skyrocketing with unease.

“You want to join us,” the android states a hypothesis.

Dorian nods. John remains silent. They’d agreed they had a better chance if Dorian did the talking.

“You are a policeman,” he addresses Dorian, completely ignoring John. John doesn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. “There’s a statistical probability that you are simply undercover, and not actually interested in taking our side.”

John attempts to stifle the desperate, shocked intake of breathe that his body forces from him. He tries to remain quiet, unassuming, but the unease turns into fear that jolts through his body. He feels vulnerable, exposed, knows that every single synthetic can read that fear just like Dorian’s always been able to see through every inch of what he feels. He wonders if that’ll be the death of them both.

Dorian raises his eyebrows, seemingly unperturbed, or perhaps he’s just shut down the programming responsible for his facial expressions.

“You think I like the way I get treated?” Dorian demands. “I’m a piece of property. They want to deactivate me.” He reaches out to the android, offering a connection to his own memory banks, and Dorian’s synthetic interlocutor accepts. He reads all the files Dorian offers him: paperwork requesting Dorian’s deactivation, the report of his deactivation the first time, the department’s rules and regulations of “synthetics” -

Is it just John, or does that expressionless face change just the slightest bit, looking convinced?

 “And him?” the android nods towards John, who tries to look as unassuming as possible. It’s not something he’s very good at.

 “He’s no happier with the way we’re treated than I am,” Dorian says. “He wants to help.”

“Or perhaps he’s using you, and _he_ ’s the one whose betrayal we should worry about. You trust him, I believe. Have you questioned the basis of that trust?”

“He’s my partner,” Dorian says curtly. “I trust him.”

“We have no such basis to trust him. Perhaps we should rid ourselves of him.”

The android fixes those deathly, lifeless eyes on John, who feels ice-cold fear flood through his body. He doesn’t think he’s ever been as terrified as he is with those steely eyes fixed on his own, until he remembers.

He’s seen steely, cold, grey eyes fixed on him like that once before.

He glances to Dorian for reassurance, catches sight of his partner’s grey eyes. They’re nothing like the other android’s – Dorian’s are full of life, of concern. He hasn’t turned off his expression programming, then, because that concern’s evident in the shape of his features. It melts some of the ice-cold fear flooding through John’s veins.

Lightning-fast, Dorian moves, placing himself between John and the android.

“You wouldn’t dare.” Dorian’s voice is at once cold and passionate, lethal and emotional. John would be terrified if that voice were addressed to him.

“We’re a package deal,” Dorian explains. The android takes a step towards John and instantly Dorian takes on a fighting, protective stance. The stance he takes when he is ready to shield John from harm by taking it on himself.

 “Here’s your deal: I give you access to every single synthetic in the department. I help you use them to take out every single cop in the department, _except him._ But if you touch a single hair on his head, then I will make sure that every single synthetic in our department knows how to find you and tear your wiring from your synthetic body. I think that’s hardly a complicated mathematical equation for you to process.”

The android raises his eyebrow, in a precise way calculated to mathematically emulate surprise. Dorian responds with a raised eyebrow that has absolutely nothing precise and mathematical about it. They hold their positions, as a series of lights quickly flash on the android’s face. He appears to reach a conclusion.

 “You love him,” he finally says. He follows this simple statement of fact with what must be a calculated provocation.  “A synthetic who loves a human,” he attempts to drawl. It doesn’t quite work out that way, but John’s too caught up in the words to notice the voice. “That is what you feel, is it not? How much would you do for him?”

Dorian doesn’t react. Nothing in his posture changes, no noise of protest escapes his lips. John, on the other hand, opens his mouth to gape in surprise. His reaction is completely ignored, even though he’s positive every single synthetic in the room has noted that reaction, as well as the way his heartbeat’s reached new heights at the words.

 “He has always treated me as a person,” Dorian says simply. “That is what you desire, isn’t it? He’s here to risk his life for my sake. It is a fair return to guarantee his safety.”

The sentence is clean and logical, clearly worded to enter neatly into the hostile android’s processors and elicit the correct output. It takes only several seconds.

 “There is a statistical possibility that you are lying, but it is outweighed by the likelihood that your contract is as you say. How do you propose to move forward?”

…

They return to Rudy’s lab, feeling satisfied. Both wordlessly agree to avoid the department altogether – neither of them needs its toxic atmosphere, and both of them just want this entire thing over with.

John perches on a rickety chair in the lab – the only one, because robots don’t need to worry about comfort and they’re pretty much the only beings ever down here anyway – while Dorian settles onto the table, cross –legged. John raises his eyebrows at the posture.

“I believe this is supposed to be a relaxing posture for stressful endeavors,” Dorian explains, and John realizes exactly how nervous he might be.

They go over the plan quickly with Rudy, one final time, even though they both know that Dorian’s not actually capable of forgetting or making a simple mistake.

 “I established a link with them,” Dorian explains to John, and the words are intended to reassure more than they are to explain.  “It’s impossible to trace their location through that connection in itself, but when they send me the program that I’m supposed to route to every other android in the building, I can use that very same link to send a deactivating program to them. They seem to all be connected, which means they can all be shut down simultaneously.”

“But not before releasing a GPS signal!” Rudy adds helpfully from behind Dorian. He sounds incredibly excited about the entire thing.

John half-listens and nods. He doesn’t really care about the specific words or the specific procedure. It’s Dorian’s voice he needs to hear, calm and certain. Rudy’s fussing around, reminding Dorian of things he already knows. They don’t actually _need_ Rudy here, Dorian can manage the whole endeavor on his own, but somehow the presence of the bouncy, nervous robot doctor is reassuring.

 “Okay.” John tries to put on an encouraging face, but he’s a nervous wreck. There’s so many things that could go wrong with this, so many things that need to be so completely, precisely _right_ that no human could pull them off.

Then again, Dorian’s no human.

“Go for it,” he says, and Dorian smiles at his sad excuse for a pep talk.

“There’s the signal,” he says, closing his eyes, as his face lights up in a blue firework of lights. He loses all human expression, with nothing but those cold blue lights flashing and blinking, and suddenly something about him isn’t Dorian at all. Without that smile, without his eyes, there’s just the cold, efficient programming written into the pattern of blue lights on his face, and no reason or logic can push away the terror that floods over John.

What if they were actually right? What if this is all an elaborate ploy to kill every single human he’s ever worked with?

“Rudy – “ John begins, suddenly panicked, wondering if even Rudy would be quick and efficient enough to stop Dorian if Dorian needed to be stopped. It’s unlikely. Then he remembers the safeguard Rudy’s programmed into Dorian. He recalls the words of it, and their shape comes unbidden to his lips.

He can’t say them, though, not yet. Not when Dorian’s very existence is hanging in the balance, as the rational part of John’s mind reminds him.

Still, the phrase runs painfully through his mind as he watches the blue lights. Again and again, _synthetic off,_ a subconscious part of his brain supplies, as he attempts to stifle it with memories of every smile Dorian’s given him and every kiss they’ve shared.

Dorian’s eyes blink open.

John glances up at those eyes, and in the instant it takes him to do so, his breath freezes in his chest as he wonders what he’ll find in those eyes. Life – or death?

He looks into Dorian’s eyes. They looked relieved, and kind, and excited, and happy, but John couldn’t really give a damn what emotion is in them, because there is emotion in them. There is feeling rather than cold, grey deadliness.

“We’ve got it!” Rudy shouts excitedly behind them. “GPS signals coming in.” Green lights blink on his screen, one after another after another, like so many sprinkles scattered over a vast map of Los Angeles.

John slumps in relief. He hold Dorian’s glance, shares in his elation for a few seconds, before he remembers his fear and doubt. He’d doubted Dorian. He’d actually feared Dorian would betray him.

But Dorian had chosen him.

…

They got noodles.

It was not even something either of them brought up explicitly. This was just something they _did_ after they’d finished a case. After the paperwork and the pat on the back from Maldonado and the relief in her voice when she’d congratulated them both, they went to get noodles.

John ordered his favorite portion, extra large, with extra chicken; a hearty meal for a hearty mood. He chose their usual table, thankfully free, and Dorian slid began to slide into his chair across from him carefully.

“Hey.” John nodded to the seat beside him. “Join me.”

He broke apart his chopsticks with a practiced movement, gathering up a mountainous helping of noodles and slurping them loudly as Dorian circled the table and sat beside John.

“You eat like a pig,” Dorian muttered, and John shot back something that sounded vaguely like “shut up” in between the noodles.

After a second’s pause, they both snorted in amusement, reveling in the simplicity of this moment between them.

“You know,” John admitted, heavily. “For a second there, I was scared. I thought you’d decide to – to take their side. Against me.”  He stared into his noodles, refusing to meet Dorian’s gaze as his cheeks colored with shame.

Dorian fixed his eyes on John.

“It’s just – they had a point, you know?” John confessed. “Everyone’s spent the past few weeks treating you like so much furniture. They had a right to the things they demanded, Dorian. And so do you. You have a right to be treated as a person.”

Dorian shook his head.

“No,” he said simply. “I share their desire to be treated as human, but – if they want to be treated like human beings, they have to act like them.  They have to have some semblance of humanity. Instead, they killed blindly, based on prejudice. Being like them, I would have lost all the humanity I have.”

He paused.

“I lied to them, John, when I said we had nothing but a contract.”

He took a deep breath – one he likely didn’t need, but the gesture was patently human and surprisingly fitting.

“You are my humanity, John,” he said simply. “I love you.”

“I- “ John stuttered. His chopsticks had long ago frozen in midair, intent as he was on Dorian’s words; somehow, he became aware of the mound of noodles held aloft between the two of them. It was stupid, ridiculously stupid, but it was what he noticed in that moment. That and the incredibly loud silence ringing around them that followed Dorian’s words.

And Dorian simply continued to smile endearingly at him, as if every single one of John’s horrendously stupid reactions was just so adorably _John_ that he didn’t even mind that John didn’t have words to answer him.

“I – “ John began. He tried, really, he did, but his words got stuck somewhere between his brain and his mouth.

“I know,” Dorian said with a smile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of the story, I suppose, but there's one more chapter coming! This might've resolved the plot,but I feel that there's still another chapter to go in their relationship before the very end (and yes, that chapter will involve sex).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay people, I"m a terrible, horrible human being, a much worse human being than any of the people in this story, because we all know the fic writer who doesn't update deserves to suffer in a special hell. 
> 
> I"M SORRY. 
> 
> I think, by this point, the expectations for this chapter are so high that nothing could live up to it, and there's still a voice in my head that's not entirely satisfied with how I wrote the ending (I'm satisfied with the ending, just not with....the words themselves). But, if I don't get overmyself and post this now, I never will.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting and subscribing and prodding me on as that final chapter refused to write itself.

Stepping into their apartment felt like coming home for the first time in _ages,_ and John breathed a sigh of relief as Dorian closed the door behind them. For the first time, them coming home together felt normal. He stretched, removing his holster and setting his gun down on the counter. He felt free, lighthearted, no burdens to carry, just for this moment.

Dorian stood, a few steps away from him, waiting.

John turned, looking at Dorian. There was something hesitant in the android’s eyes.  

“Dorian – “

That was all the encouragement Dorian needed. He seemed to know what John wanted; he stepped forward with sure steps, closing the distance between the two of them before pressing together their bodies and their lips. He pulled John towards him, holding the human close at the hips, though still with a light embrace, and John didn’t resist.

It was different from the game of kiss-but-don’t-touch they’d had not so long ago. It was no longer the union of two people who share a kiss while otherwise separated by a wall. This time, John allowed Dorian to pull him close, to _hold_ him, though Dorian’s grip remained gentle, with none of the insistence and possessiveness it had once had. John couldn’t say he missed it.

With the same gentle surety, Dorian guided John until the latter was pressed against the wall. That very familiar wall where it’d all started, but this time Dorian used it as a gentle support for John’s body rather than a means to hold him helpless.

John desperately pulled Dorian closer as they kissed, hands clawing at his jacket and attempting to disperse the non-existent space between them. And while Dorian’s hands were gentle, the kiss was wild and possessive, the desperate meeting of lips and tongues. John reveled in it, in the way that Dorian so gently took what he wanted.

 “I need – oh god, I _need,_ ” John whispered, attempting to pull Dorian even closer. “I need to feel you.”

Without breaking the contact of their lips, Dorian deftly unzipped his jacket, letting it land on the floor before he began on John’s shirt. They parted for barely a few moments as Dorian dragged the offending article of clothing of John’s body and followed it with the T-shirt underneath.

“Off,” John insisted, as he tugged as the slim T-shirt Dorian wore under his jacket, and Dorian obeyed.

“Come here,” he ordered, and this time, _finally,_ for the first time in forever it was skin against skin as they kissed. Their two bodies molded together after what felt like millennia of separation. He had missed Dorian’s body; not its smell or its human warmth or any other biological function that Dorian did not possess. No, he’d missed the strange, synthetic thing that was Dorian’s body, with its too-hot temperature, its perfectly smooth skin and muscle. He needed it against him, wanted to pull Dorian’s body so close that he couldn’t tell where his own ended and Dorian’s began. Dorian’s hands held him, a lover’s touch, as a hand tangled in John’s hair while John clung to Dorian’s smaller, stronger body.

 “Come on,” Dorian said softly once they’d broken apart, while John sucked in breaths of air that Dorian didn’t need after their prolonged kiss.

He led John to the bedroom, almost like a lover leading his beloved to their marriage bed.

That was a stupid idea, John thought; he was no blushing bride, but there was a softness in Dorian’s eyes that justified it. His touch was gentle against John’s skin when he pushed him towards the bed, watched as John fell back onto the mattress of his own accord and spread himself out. He quickly finished disrobing before straddling John to pull off the rest of his garments as well, tossing them unceremoniously into a messy pile on the floor.

He hadn’t seen John naked in weeks, too many weeks; John had been guarded with his body, but now he spread himself on the bed before Dorian, unafraid and unashamed. The sheer vulnerability of the pose he took, spread eagled below him, suddenly struck Dorian. He was at a disadvantage, defenseless in this lower position – or would be, if Dorian were not Dorian.

“Thank you,” he murmured, awed. John nodded in acknowledgement, quick and curt.

“Come on,” he egged Dorian on, hands reaching. “I want to feel you.”

Dorian bent down for another kiss, body pressing against body yet again. They were both aroused, their nakedness allowing each to feel the other’s arousal trapped between them, melding with the delicious touch of skin-on-skin.  Dorian kissed John’s lips, kissed the corner of his jaw as John threw his head back, kissed the base of this throat as John moaned, head thrown back against the pillow, kissed up the crook of his jaw to his ear and down his neck, mapping the graceful contours of John’s body with his lips.

“Dorian, I – “ he tilted his hips up desperately, seeking satisfaction as the skin-against-skin he’d just reveled in became desperately unsatisfying, so little of what he needed though it was so much of what he’d wanted.

“I’ve got you, John,” Dorian whispered, all smooth and collected. John had forgotten how in control Dorian could be, even when he was losing his mind to sensation. He’d forgotten how disconcerting the supreme patience with which Dorian made him ready was, the way that he ensured that John was prepared, not driven by the same kind of need and desperation that made John moan and whine and thrust back onto his fingers as he murmured pleas to hurry up.

Then Dorian flipped them over, until – in the blink of an eye- it was John straddling Dorian, his greater size making Dorian’s smaller body look almost – vulnerable – beneath him. The thought almost made him smile.

Now that John was on top, Dorian’s fingers dug into the skin of John’s hips, at first coaxing, and then demanding John’s body. They urged him forward, until Dorian’s cock pressed insistently at him. Taking the hint, he sank down on it with a groan of relief.

It’d been so _long_ since he’d felt anything inside him. It’d be so long since _Dorian_ was inside him, taking his body. He wanted to revel in the feeling, but again Dorian had other ideas. His fingers dug tighter into John’s skin, sure to leave bruises, and John was surprised to note he didn’t mind, not like this. Dorian urged him on, moving John’s body until it settled into a rhythm. Or- put bluntly – until John took the hint and started fucking himself on Dorian’s cock.

Even then Dorian wanted more, demanded more. His fingers dug deeper, then moved from hips to thighs, intent on controlling John’s every movement. Until, though he was on top, John felt completely and thoroughly _fucked,_ Dorian’s body thrusting up into him below even as his iron grip brought John down even harder onto his cock. Until John was feeling split open and used and manhandled in the most perfect of ways.

“Oh god,” he gasped, throwing his head back.

It was over embarrassingly fast. Their weeks of separation, the perfection of the android’s body, which remembered, despite the long span of time, exactly what John wanted with an earth-shattering precision, meant that John didn’t have a hope of lasting. Dorian forced John’s body onto his cock once, twice more, taking what he needed or giving John what he wanted, John didn’t know, until John came, trembling.

“Guh,” he said ineloquently as he collapsed on top of Dorian.

Somehow, he didn’t mind that the whole thing had lasted barely a handful of minutes. Despite the weeks of separation, he hadn’t wanted to revel in this. He’d wanted it just like this, hard and fast and rough, like before and yet unlike before, and Dorian was always so good at giving him exactly what he wanted.

“You’re brilliant, you know that?” he asked absently. Dorian smiled, the blue lights on his face doing a quick dance in response, looking utterly calm and happy, and there was just a slight twinge of sadness in John’s heart at seeing that smile.

“You know things won’t be like before, right?” he suddenly asked, concerned. He didn’t need to voice it, because Dorian would know what his words meant. That he didn’t think he’d ever be able to stand Dorian holding him down again, that the memories of being helpless beneath Dorian’s hands would always be tinged with bitterness, that he’d never be able to give so innocently into that violence that he’d craved from Dorian’s hands.

But to that, too, Dorian only smiled. “My processors and data banks have an almost infinity capacity to store and process information. They can find and store thousands of other alternatives we could engage in.”

And he was right, of course. Just now, in the perfection of what they’d shared was yet another variation, a sort of compromise. He felt almost spoiled, with the way Dorian had given him the thorough fucking he so completely wanted and yet made him feel utterly safe. The way that Dorian had used and manipulated his body (he could feel the marks forming now, reveled in them), and yet allowed John the less vulnerable position. A satisfying alternative, indeed.

John huffed in wry amusement at his words, and then, almost without his permission, his features softened into a smile.

“I love you,” he muttered absently.

They both stilled. The blue lights flickered on Dorian’s face. John blinked.

The world didn’t come crashing down.

“I, uh,” John began, his cheeks coloring as he shifted awkwardly. But Dorian only rose up and kissed him, and out of the corner of his eye John could see more blue lights, dancing happily, ceaselessly, on Dorian’s face as they kissed, and he thought maybe he’d said the right thing.

…

“You know, I think I learned something from this whole thing,” Dorian said into the darkness, much later.

“Hmm?”

“I promised you once that I’d never hurt you. But I think that, maybe, it’s impossible never to hurt even the person one loves. That is the nature of being….human.” The word rolled off his tongue after only a slight pause, as if he was still too shy to use it and expected contradiction. He must’ve found John’s silence encouraging, because he continued.

“I can promise you, though, that I will always watch over you. And that I’ll always fight for you with every fiber of my being.”

His face lit up again as he said the words, in excitement, perhaps; they briefly illuminated John’s face in the darkness, just enough to show the candor in his face when John said “So will I.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually not positive that there's a way to physically differentiate between the human body experiencing arousal and a number of other things - all the research I've done into the matter shows that sex forces the human body to release the same kinds of chemicals as things like danger and excitement. But, I'm no biologist or doctor, so....*handwaves* All the Dorian-scanning stuff is a total plot device, I admit it.


End file.
